There are those trivia games where you’re totally on your “A” game and win that tiebreaker for first place, then there are “those” games. You know – where you flub presidents questions, forget where Area 51 is located (forgive us – it is classified, after all), have no clue what the tallest roller coaster in the world is named (it’s not Longshanks McLong), guess the wrong animal adorning a jeans logo, miss a playing cards q – and also blow questions about animals with bloody milk – and ballet – to boot! That not even taking into account that pesky final question about technology that we clearly need to learn more about since they just KEEP asking about it in every game we go to play (or so it seems). Maybe I’ll let AI help me out!

“Alexa? Tell me everything about the invention of the computer mouse, will ya? Thanks, you’re a doll! ☺ “

Wait, are we supposed to thank our AI when they look up stuff on the Internets for us?

I’ll hedge my bets and be polite since I’ve seen Terminator 2 too many times – and my husband is a “HAL 9000 got a raw deal” kind of guy! So if I’m a dork for thanking a machine for looking up the latest EGOT winners who won Primetime Emmy awards as composers for the series “Only Murders in the Building” – yeah, go ahead and make fun of me!

Because I’m in a good mood on this rare Saturday morning when I am not at work, I’ll save you all the trouble of asking your AI who the latest EGOT winners are (psst it’s Benj Pasek and Justin Paul). Yeah, I don’t know who they are, either! Guess I’ll have to update my EGOT winners blog sometime, eh? Haha, free time? What’s that? 🤔😂

Yeah, it was a rough ride of a trivia question set for a married duo who just wanted to get out of the house on a nice evening! It was a rather bustling trivia night at McShane’s, with 15 teams duking it out for gift certificates and bragging rights.

Speaking of questions, here are some very abbreviated ones:

Round One

Greek Mythology – What Trojan War hero had a heel weakness?

Science! – What physicist was born in Alm, Germany in 1879?

Metals – What element is sometimes called quicksilver?

No misses this round…

Round Two

Presidents – What are the two surnames of both pairs of father/son U.S. presidents? This was our first clue that we (well me) – wasn’t on my “A” game. We picked a grandfather grandson duo (slap me)! Amateur hour 🤦‍♀️

Classified – In which U.S. state would you find Area 51? Miss…

Tennis Greats

Because of our flubbing those first two questions, I didn’t want to fuck this one up! So I hastily jotted down a list of the best tennis players I could think of…(sorry Steffi Graf I forgot about you)!

The question: Which Williams sister has won more Grand Slam titles?

Of COURSE they didn’t ask about any of the players I listed…but we still got it.

Round Three

Chess – Which chess piece can only move diagonally, but can do so for any number of spaces?

Desserts – Which dessert is made from coffee-soaked lady fingers and marscapone cheese?

Authors – Which author of The Old Man and the Sea is considered to be one of the greatest 20th century writers?

No misses this round…

Halftime – Which Came First?

Choose the snack food that was made available to the public first out of the following pairs:

H1 Pringles or Ruffles

H2 Twinkies or Ding Dongs

H3 Jif or Skippy

H4 Snickers or Kit Kat

Got all of these correct, my husband deserves all of the credit (nice work, man)! Ten much needed points!

We were in third (played under the alias Minnesota Nice) with 33 points going into into the final, behind Pursuit of Snappyness, Dead Guys (both tied for second) and Spacecats, who were in first with 36.

Round Four

Marsupials – Which marsupial is the only one native to North America?

Cards – Which is the only king without a mustache in a standard deck of playing cards? I wanted to guess hearts because my thinking was “If a king is looking for the next lady he’s going to behead, he’s not going to take risks with the facial hair.” But we went with spades instead (take a guess who was right) 😔

Amusement Parks – Located at Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey, what is the name of the tallest roller coaster in the world? We used our secret word to get out of having to answer this.

Round Five

Ballet – What ballet term means “in front?” Nope…

Animal Kingdom – What mammal has milk that is bright pink in color due to two acids that they produce shortly after giving birth? Nope…

Planets – Which planet has the most gravity? Got this, yay didn’t blow the whole round!

Round Six

Logos – Which animals are depicted on the logo for Levi’s Jeans? I work in a place that sells these, and lots of the T shirts under this brand have bears on them (I think because the company is in California), but bears wasn’t the correct answer. Miss…

On the Money – On which paper U.S. currency does Thomas Jefferson appear?

The Law – What is the name for the classification of a crime less serious than a crime – but more serious than a civil infraction?

We were in eighth (out of 15 teams) going into the final with 55 points. Spacecats were in first with?? points.

Here was our final question in the category of technology:

Introduced for its Alto computing system, which company, known for a different kind of technology, introduced the first computer mouse?

Nope…I believe the Dead Guys team swooped ahead to take first on this. How many hashtag words will they use to describe their victory on social media? #championsofmcshanes, #hoorayfordeadguys, #wekilleditontrivianight, #triviageniuses, #deadguysaintnothintofuckwith? 😁 Poor Stacy for having to read their million letter long team names week after week, one of these days we’ll need to perform CPR on her when she loses her breath!

Seriously, it’s all in good fun, isn’t it?

We do have a trivia night planned next week, but since it’s the evening after I get a root canal, well, we’ll see if it actually happens! It’s all part of my “trivia revolves around my life, not the other way around” thing I’ve been doing this year.

As always, Go Pods – even if you try to disguise yourselves under a clever alias – and stay classy, Snoopy!